While in San Francisco
earlier this month, I met up with Laszlo’s
Founder and CTO, David Temkin, along with CMO Kent Libbey. Laszlo has an open source Ajax
application development platform called OpenLaszlo - which has been used for external apps
like Pandora (online radio and music sharing) and ishares.com (Barclays sharemarket app). OpenLaszlo was
released at the end of 2004 and claims to have over a quarter of a million downloads to
date. Meanwhile Laszlo received an $8 million Series C round of funding in September and
in October they made a deal with Sun Microsystems, to enable OpenLaszlo applications to
run on the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME).
When I spoke to David, my ears pricked up when he mentioned that Laszlo is building a WebOS. While he wasn't able to give me many details, he did say the WebOS will be a framework as well as a set of apps. Hmmm, the WebOS space is getting crowded! More on this as it develops.
Pandora, one of my fave online radios, uses OpenLaszlo
OpenLaszlo is often talked about as an open source competitor to Adobe's Flex, because both are rich client application development platforms. And from the user's perspective, a website built with Laszlo is almost identical to a website built with Flash (indeed OpenLaszlo has a Flash run-time option). From a company and developer perspective, the competition is pretty fierce between the two - illustrated by this post by Raju Bitter, an open source evangelist who uses Laszlo.
I asked David what the difference is between OpenLaszlo and Flex - he told me that OpenLaszlo is more consumer focused than Flex, which he says is mainly for enterprise.
In our briefing, David showed me some nifty apps. Laszlo Mail is a commercial rich client email app that is used by ISPs and other "communication service providers". Building on this is Laszlo's suite of personal productivity apps, currently in development, which they call Digital Life. Again, they plan to license this to ISPs and the like. It features email, IM, photo-sharing, calendar and works on mobile devices.
Laszlo Digital Life
All in all, OpenLaszlo is a compelling platform for building rich Ajax applications - or even Flash apps. They have a hard road to hoe competing against Adobe, a comparatively huge company with many more resources at their disposal (internal developers, marketing, brand name, money, etc). But being open source gives OpenLaszlo a lot of credibility in the developer community. It would be even better if they got a couple more 'glamor' projects like the Pandora one, to raise their profile in the consumer world.
What are your thoughts on Laszlo? Has anyone here used it?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Laszlo To Release a WebOS.
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I will say that Raju's post seems somewhat selective with it's evidence (i.e. mixing up the cost of Flex Data Services server software with the free SDK, and ignoring the rate at which new versions of the Flash player penetrate the market) but I guess it was a response to an attack on Laslo.
It's an interesting technology, and it is interesting to see the same concepts - declarative interface languages - appearing in so many places (Laslo, Flex, WPF).
Posted by: JulesLt | November 27, 2006 1:29 AMIt's the speed of development and deployment that will make or break this, unless there's a significant difference in the user experience.
Posted by: Mikael Bergkvist | November 27, 2006 1:43 AMThat might not be the case, since ajax and javascripts have gone a long way since the nineties.
Is the web fastloading enough today? - that's the question.
I've used it and liked it a lot; this will be a good move from LaszloSystems, because they already have the most crucial part of a webtop, widget-set.
However as I always say, I'm against the webos idea; web is webos, why would developers limit themselves in some 3rd party widget-sets instead of standards; that's why my favourite GoogleOS was actually nothing but Firefox, that boots up from a CD or a USB thumb drive.
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | November 27, 2006 3:13 AMLaszlo is crap. Have you tried Flex2 yet?
See:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/?tab:samples=1
Posted by: BS Detector | November 27, 2006 7:53 AMBTW, if Laszlo is all that, then explain why Laszlo is rebuilding their own web site using Drupal???
Laszlo WebOS? I don't think so ... it's marketing BS!
Posted by: BS Detector | November 27, 2006 8:38 AMOpenLaszlo is by far the most elegant and productive application development tool I have used in my 20 years of software development.
OpenLaszlo was selected to develop our Cooqy widgets for eBay shoppers and sellers: http://www.cooqy.com
eBay is taking notice of how widgets will power a new wave of e-commerce on the fringe of the web and in social networks like MySpace. Cooqy has recently been doing joint press briefings together with eBay: http://www.ebaychatter.com/the_chatter/2006/11/can_ecommerce_l.html
Posted by: Robert Yeager | November 27, 2006 8:57 AMLaszlo did recently rebuild its site. It uses Drupal for content mangement and OpenLaszlo for the homepage client application as well as portions of the interior of the site. The technologies are not compeitive.
You'll also find that the Drupal community itself is adding OpenLaszlo support to Drupal.
David Temkin
Posted by: David Temkin | November 27, 2006 10:33 AMFounder and CTO, Laszlo Systems
I have played around with LaszloMail from quite some time and it was quite impressed with the app.
And yes, Eclipse does have a technology project on Laszlo and its called IDEforLaszlo
http://www.eclipse.org/laszlo/
Its an Eclipse-based development environment for creating, editing, debugging, and testing applications based on the LZX declarative mark-up language
Posted by: Venu | November 27, 2006 10:50 AMDrupal has its own view system that incorporates AJAX in a clean and simple way, and it doesn't need some bloated architecture like Laszlo Presentation Server to work or that half-assed Laszlo 'SOLO' alternative. And BTW, Flex is also 'consumer oriented' (what the fuck does that actually mean, anyway?) With Drupal, it's easy to add support for just about anything, including Flex and Dojo. Quit your bullshitting, Mr. 'CTO & Co-Founder'. Laszlo is useless bloatware.
Posted by: BS Detector | November 27, 2006 11:00 AMWe used Laszlo to build our online diagram editor, Gliffy.
http://www.gliffy.com
Laszlo has provided us with everything we needed to build a sophisticated web application, and we recommend OpenLaszlo as a development platform.
Chris Kohlhardt
Posted by: Chris Kohlhardt | November 27, 2006 11:01 AMCo-founder, Gliffy Inc.
Adobe Flex Builder 2 Eclipse Plugin:
http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/Web_Links-index-req-viewlink-cid-604.html
Posted by: BS Detector | November 27, 2006 11:07 AMIsn't it interesting that all the Laszlo 'testimonials' are using FLASH, not AJAX. And that includes Laszlo's own website.
'Open' & 'Ajax' are nice marketing buzzwords, aren't they?
More Laszlo BS!
Posted by: BS Detector | November 27, 2006 12:02 PMLet the fight being on WebOS. MSFT and google are otehr top contendenders. I tink web os would just not be software, but would also include massive data center related functionalities
Posted by: dhoom | November 27, 2006 12:37 PM"I asked David [Temkin] what the difference is between OpenLaszlo and Flex - he told me that OpenLaszlo is more consumer focused than Flex, which he says is mainly for enterprise."
I'm not sure that's an accurate characterization. Large businesses have certainly moved to the Adobe Flex ecology surprisingly quickly, but that's more likely because they need to make business interfaces more often than individual designers do. The interfaces themselves, though, are not confined to business users.
Both Laszlo and Flex use XML to functionally describe web interfaces. The scope of their constructs vary, and the depth of the surrounding ecologies vary... I guess that's close to how I would answer the same question.
"And from the user's perspective, a website built with Laszlo is almost identical to a website built with Flash (indeed OpenLaszlo has a Flash run-time option)."
Both environments create SWF files, which are rendered (cross-browser, cross-OS, not yet cross-device) with the standard Adobe Flash Player. (Laszlo will soon compile to DHTML as well, with either a similar or a different XML set for such interfaces.)
jd/adobe
Posted by: John Dowdell | November 27, 2006 3:16 PMThe folks from Lazlo made a very interesting presentation at www.webguild.org. They should approach GRUUVE www.gruuve.com, this would be a glamour project that will raise their profile.
Posted by: WebGuild | November 27, 2006 5:17 PMI'm not sure which is better between Laszlo and Flex. However, while I've used Laszlo, it could satisfy me with it's simple and intuitive structures. Someone told that Laszlo was just a TOY-KIT, but I don't think so. Using Laszlo, lots of RIAs could be built up so nicely, despite some lack of feature and function.
Flash widget in CREAMaid is also generated by Laslzo. I tried to use Flex2, but Flex2 applications could only run on Flash 9. That's the reason why I gave up to build web application by Flex2.
Posted by: capri | November 27, 2006 7:28 PMBefore discussing the merits of technology A vs. B, you must always reference the *context*.
Typically context, in reference to technology, is known as "requirements".
No discussion of technology is meaningful without reference to requirements.
Have a nice day.
Posted by: joe bloe | November 27, 2006 11:42 PMInteresting discussion going on here.
JulesLt / "Flex is free": I wasn't the one starting to mix up the Flex SDK and Flex Server licensing fee. But people keep telling me that "Flex is free". So what does "Flex" mean in this context? The SDK, the server, the IDE? Well, it could easily give you the impression that the whole Flex product line is free. So if you compare the Laszlo SOLO deployed application with the free Flex SDK, that's fair. Both Laszlo SOLO and the Flex SDK (compiler) give you an SWF file which can be embedded into an HTML page and connect to any backend system (CMS, portal, ect.) through HTTP requests. But with Laszlo you get the whole server as an open source software for free, which is a lot more.
AJAX/DHTML and Flash runtime: The whole concept behind Lazslo was to give you a tool which produces multiple runtimes from the same LZX code. That's a huge difference if you compare Adobe Flex to that. Well, you can already produce DHTML output with Laszlo if you use the preview of the 4.0 version. That's pretty cool! Wait a few more month and this will be stable for the most common browsers. And by the end of the year there will be a proof-of-concept for the Java Micro Edition as a new runtime (actually the LzPix application running on a Java enabled mobile phone).
OpenLaszlo vs Flex: We all should carefully consider the technologies we are using in our projects. I'd never say that OpenLaszlo is technically better then Flex. Much depends on where you are heading. Flex2 seems to be a lot better then the 1.5 version. But being limited to the Flash 9 runtime is a big blocker for many projects. If you plan to use lot's of functions specific to Flash in your application Flex might be the better solution. But if you plan to not only deliver Flash but DHTML/AJAX you don't even have a choice, not to talk about Java Micro Edition. The OpenLaszlo team will always be very conservative in integrating the newest Flash features into the server. Such a move would increase the incompatibility of LZX code for the different runtime formats. Functions like embedding of TTFs, MP3 sound, video and webcam integration will not be available for the DHTML runtime. But choosing the multiple runtime strategy is the right thing to do in my eyes.
Drupal for the new Lazslo Systems homepage: David is right. OpenLaslo and Flex don't have anything to do with the CMS system running on the server. Both technologies easily integrate through web services with any backend system. It's only good to see that one can easily switch the application view from one technology to another.
Posted by: raju | November 28, 2006 3:39 AMWe also used for two projects:
- A comics web site that enables user to draw and publish their comics directly online
http://www.mainada.net/comicssketch
- A Drawing component for anyone to put a drawing area in their site. It integrates directly with form inputs, so any site can use it
http://www.mainada.net/inputdraw
Laszlo was always easy and elegant and we still love it.
Posted by: Tiago Cardoso | November 29, 2006 4:40 AMThere are a lot of people working on WebOS. I personally think, the limitation will not be OpenLaszlo or Flex, but the Flash player itself. We have done a lot of RIA work - using both OL and Flex and even Flash. And the limitation with some intensive work is the basic architecture of Flash player. Almost single thread operations and slow downs when you start processing sizeable data. When you have a lot of components on the screen, it would start affecting the performance.
I would like to have a WebOS, but I think it's still 5 years away. There are other things that Laszlo can focus on, that may get it more recognition and fans at this time!
Posted by: Nirav Mehta | November 30, 2006 4:23 AMNirav:
Flash Player 9 has a completely new VM with a JIT compiler that provides a huge performance boost for Flex applications. Portions of that VM have been made available via the open source Tamarin project, hosted by Mozilla:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin
Mike
Posted by: Mike Potter | November 30, 2006 11:07 AMWe are currently evaluating it for building out some pieces of a RAD framework.
The key selling points are RIA and Open Source. That and the demos are ubercool, but at this point are years old.
From a development perspective Laszlo is easy to understand, easy to use and get into. The beginning widget set is more than adequate and the data binding approach with components is clean and elegant. Documentation is rich and there are lots of starter examples. A not talked about feature - the debug window is really powerful.
But there are some genuine problems for OpenLaszlo that give me pause when deciding what technology to invest in. Fundamentally they cannot compete against two giants. Marketing, tooling, etc will eventually overtake them if they try to compete on the same playing field. The key differentiator of price was undercut by Adobe's 1 cpu license and I don't think the multiple runtime makes enough of a business argument. Other than OS, how else can OL truly mark it's claim?
Also are they fishing around in too many directions or are they just trying to cover their bases and expand their reach? I suspect they are being spread too thin. Their current bigger projects as I know them:
J2ME Support
Legals
WebOS
LaszloMail
DigitalLife
...but from a current web developer's perspective, we don't really care about most of these. We want high productivity to satisfy client needs for producing data driven applications that work and work well.
In this regard, tooling is suffering. The IDE project is basically unusable. Mini projects like mylaszlo and Blox languish. There are some charting and other components that need cleanup and promotion.
I think this fundamentally gets down to direction and business model, for which some sacrifices will need to be made. They can't do it all. Do a few things and do them well. I think WebOS sounds cool and can tickle investors, but otherwise is stretching it.
The team has done a great job. If they can manage to get out the Legals project and refocus some energies, be responsive to developer needs, and have their marketing folk do as good a job as their engineering - they have good things ahead.
Posted by: Steve Motola | December 11, 2006 9:55 AM